Government spending plays a critical role in protecting and enforcing rights and civil liberties. Empirical evidence for a sample of industrial and developing countries shows that government expenditures on defense, law and order, social security, education, and health care are associated with...

The paper examines empirically the question of whether more unequal societies spend more on income redistribution than their more egalitarian counterparts. Theoretical arguments on this issue are inconclusive. The political economy literature suggests that redistributive spending is higher in...

This paper analyzes the relationship between inflation tax and the level of government spending in a public finance context. The key feature of the model developed is that it recognizes the possibility that conventional taxes, such as the consumption tax, may carry increasing marginal collection...

This paper examines the methodological issues arising in the measurement of the distributional impact of tax and expenditure policies, with emphasis on the problems related to the measurement of the impact of adjustment programs on the welfare of the poor. Both conceptual and empirical...

The paper proposes a new welfare-based measure to evaluate the distributive effects of public programs. The proposed measure differs from traditional approaches in two important ways: first, it is based on life-cycle considerations, since most public expenditure programs have an intertemporal...

This paper focuses on post-crisis fiscal priorities in the ASEAN-5 economies - Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Sound economic fundamentals and timely and forceful policy responses to the crisis, including fiscal stimulus, contributed to rapid economic recovery in the...

This 2004 Article IV Consultation highlights that with growth proceeding at a steady pace of 2.6 percent during 2004, the Spanish economy has weathered the slowdown in the European Union relatively well. The external current account is estimated to have widened to some 4¼ percent of GDP in...

This 2013 Article IV Consultation highlights that in a context of weakening economic conditions in Europe and sizeable fiscal consolidation and domestic policy uncertainty, the French economy flat lined in 2012. However, recent improvements in economic indicators support the expectation of a...